Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

134 FRANCIS BACON AND MAN’S TWO-FACED KINGDOM
with others conjures up a great panoply of illusion and imposture, where truth
succumbs to the sophistries of social convention: these are the Idola Theatri or
Idols of the Theatre. According to Bacon, there is no thinking in a vacuum: man
is beset by what others thought before him, and therefore he is the appointed heir
to all past sects and philosophies. The Idols of the Theatre are for ever hovering
over the prospective philosopher (Nov. Org. I, 44). The mind of man, in sum, is
by no means a tabula abrasa, to use the consecrated empiricist shibboleth, but
rather an ‘enchanted glass’ or ‘distorted mirror’ (St Paul, I Cor. 13: 9–10, 12).
The true interpreter of Nature, that is, the true philosopher, must be always on his
guard against the intrusion of such Trugbilder or mirages into his field of
cognitive interests. Bacon, however, never expressly states that man can become
entirely free from such deceiving propensities. Not even the last of them, that is,
the Idola Theatri or unlawful children of philosophy, disappear from the
menacing potential of Bacon’s own speculations.
Let us go back to the technocratic component that the concept of instauratio
encapsulated. Bacon, seemingly innocently, defines philosophy as ‘the Inquiry of
Causes and the Production of Effects’ (De Augmentis III, 4: I, 550; IV, 346).
Likewise, the High Priest in the Nova Atlantis instructs the admiring visitor by
telling him that ‘the end of our Foundation [that is, Salomon’s House] is the
knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the
bounds of human empire to the effecting of all things possible’ (III, 156).
Now, the decisively striking point in these and similar definitions is their second
part, for traditional philosophical discourse did not contemplate the physical
production of anything. Surely, the ‘effects’ (opera) to be achieved are dictated
by the general philanthropic tenor of Bacon’s philosophy, but it would be a gross
mistake to confuse it, as is often done, with any form of utilitarianism. 19 First of
all, we have to identify the ideological trend that Bacon is recapturing when
proffering such pithy definitions. Now, this trend leads us back to a tradition
which, though prior to humanistic thought, inspired a great deal of philosophical
writing in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In fact, the first great
representative of this current in the modern epoch is Nicholas of Cusa (1401–
64), who systematically reflected on the much-discussed relationship between
God’s and man’s intellect and their opera. Heir to Neoplatonic traditions, Cusa
establishes that man, that fallen creature, is not wholly devoid of that allimportant
and defining attribute of the Christian Godhead: the power to create. 20
Even as God created the world, man is empowered to create another world (that
of mathematicals and abstract notions) in so far as he is not eternally condemned
to copying or imitating Nature but is able to surpass her by making items (e.g. a
spoon) for which Nature has no exemplar or prototype. 21 Of course, Cusa’s main
interests were theological and hence he did not develop a line of thought which
we could easily link with ‘the question of technology’, as it came to be
formulated much later. But it is surprising how tantalizingly close he came to
giving a systematic response to many of the sporadic pronouncements—